Naidu fumes at EC order on transfer of intelligence chief

Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday questioned the orders of the Election Commission (EC) to transfer intelligence chief AB Venkateshwar Rao, who was not involved in election duties and was completely out of the purview of the EC.

Following complaints by the YSR Congress Party, the EC on Tuesday ordered the transfer of the state intelligence director general and the superintendents of police of Kadapa and Srikakulam, with directives not to assign the trio any polling duties.

The intelligence chief supervises the security of the chief minister, who has Z+ category security owing to severe threat perception.


Calling the order undemocratic, Naidu said it doesn’t mention the reasons for such a transfer. He has written to the EC, asking it to review its decision and cancel the transfer orders.

“All of us are in the midst of hectic election campaign for the Phase-I elections which involves long hours of travel to interior places and mixing with people while campaigning. Collection of intelligence and effective deployment of police and security to me and my colleagues is looked after by the DG, Intelligence,” Naidu said in his letter.

The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) supremo also alleged that PM Narendra Modi was abusing the Election Commission (EC) by forcing it to take actions that favoured the Opposition YSRCP. “Transferring the DG, Intelligence at this hour is nothing but a deep-rooted, well-orchestrated evil design born out of criminal conspiracy hatched by Sri YS Jagan Mohan Reddy duly abetted by Sri K Chandrasekhar Rao (chief minister of Telangana) and Sri Narendra Modi,” his letter to the EC added.

Addressing the media in Vijayawada, Naidu said the EC had acted swiftly on the baseless complaints by the YSRCP, while it had not moved on the complaints filed by the ruling TDP on the irregularities by the YSRCP in filing Form-7 applications to delete lakhs of genuine voter names. “The Election Commission did not respond to our requests to locate the IP addresses of people who had filed those fraudulent Form-7 applications to delete lakhs of genuine voters and supporters of TDP,” he said. Meanwhile, the state government moved the Hyderabad High Court challenging the EC’s decision. The high court admitted the petition and posted the hearing for Thursday, while issuing notices to the EC.